


Broken Things All Pushed Into a Pile

by Smallswritesstuff



Series: "Hey There, Soldier" [5]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angsty Art Kid Klaus Hargreeves, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Less of a story more of a loose concept you feel, Light Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:27:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28139913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smallswritesstuff/pseuds/Smallswritesstuff
Summary: After their confrontation with the Sparrow Academy, Klaus and Allison visit the haunted childhood home of one Klaus Fischer - born October 1st 1989, deceased November 20th 2011.
Relationships: Klaus Hargreeves/David "Dave" Katz
Series: "Hey There, Soldier" [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2016610
Comments: 8
Kudos: 68





	Broken Things All Pushed Into a Pile

**Author's Note:**

> Title from “Lucky to Have You” by Johnny Manchild and the Poor Bastards, which is one of my favorites and a BIG-TIME canon Klave song. Please give her a listen, this band slaps and literally nobody knows it.

_Broken things all pushed into a pile_

_Reconcile all these pieces and smile._

_How are you?_

...

...

...

Five had proposed that they all try to find the rest of the 43 - figure out what went differently this time around and get help returning to their home timeline. It wasn’t too far into that plan that the Hargreeves uncovered Reginald’s files on their alternate selves. 

Five, apparently, was an acclaimed astrophysicist, whom the siblings spoke to on a video call. Allison met her doppelgänger, a wildly successful pop star from France, while she was on tour. 

The only Internet search result for Klaus was an obituary.

Klaus Fischer had passed on November 20th, 2011. The mother, Amelia, couldn’t be reached by phone or by email, but her listed address was just a few hours away. She had married an American man and raised her son here in the states. While Luther and Diego went off to meet with one “D. Cortez” at a biker bar, Allison and Klaus took a long bus ride to a sleepy suburb to find out what the old German woman might know. 

Now, on a grey and cloudy afternoon, they stand in the driveway of a dated single-story house.

“Welp.” Allison looks to Klaus. “You ready?”

Klaus isn’t sure. The mother’s car is parked out front, and there’s a rusty lamp lit by the door. The windows are blocked up by blinds. He has no idea what to expect. 

Unlike a few of his siblings, he’s never had a dream of meeting his birth mother. He’s not that sentimental. She gave him up at the drop of a hat anyway, so why should _he_ give a shit about _her?_ He was never even curious of his own national heritage. What unnerves him is the could-have-been. What unnerves him is the story of Klaus Fischer himself.

It’s unsettlingly quiet, on this chilly street. Quiet enough that he hears a few spirits drifting about somewhere in the neighborhood. Three voices? Four? Two?

He catches a fragment of a sentence. _“... can’t leave the old bitch alone…”_

He catches a bit of laughter in response. 

He reaches into the inside pocket of his coat and pulls out his silver flask. He can't enter this house while in Medium Mode. It’ll be too much. Alcohol never blocks out the ghosts completely - especially compared to the total numbing properties of the harder drugs - but it muffles the sound, if only for a little while. 

Allison watches him take a swig. She obviously isn’t thrilled that what was supposed to be a two-day binge in Dallas has become a persistent habit. But. It's been a long week. One thing at a time.

Klaus tucks the flask back into his pocket, wincing slightly at the burn in his throat. “Good to go.”

They approach the door and ring the bell. 

Amelia Fischer appears. She’s a heavy woman with thick glasses. She must be in her mid-or-late sixties, with the deep wrinkles across her face and a puff of white hair. She’s flustered and speaks to them with a heavy accent. 

Klaus hopes that his long hair and light makeup is enough of a disguise to keep him from being recognized as the aged-up version of her late child. Apparently, it is. But judging by the depth of her lenses, it may just be that she’s blind as a bat.

Allison apologizes for the sudden visit and asks if they’re interrupting anything. Amelia, though quite confused, says no. Allison introduces herself and Klaus, carefully skipping over his name, and tries to explain why they’re here. 

“We’re like your son,” Allison says at some point. She rolls up her sleeve and shows her Umbrella tattoo to the woman. Klaus does the same. “See? It’s like the Sparrow Academy’s tattoos. We were all like them, too.”

Amelia squints. “The Sparrow what?”

Allison and Klaus share a look. It was likely that Reginald Hargreeves never sought out Amelia. Not after determining that he had to remove the Umbrellas from the Academy. But surely, she must know _something_ about the 43.

“Powers,” Klaus tries simply. “Your son had paranormal abilities, right?”

Amelia is taken aback. “What? Abilities?” She glances back and forth between Klaus and Allison. “ _Was zur Hölle_ …” She surrenders and steps back, gesturing them into the house. “Okay, come in. Come, come.”

**…**

**…**

**…**

She settles onto a plush armchair in the living room. Klaus and Allison awkwardly perch on a couch facing her. They try again and again, politely, to ask Amelia about her son’s capabilities. She denies everything they say.

“No, no, no,” she eventually dismisses. “I cannot believe you have heard these stories of his.”

“Stories?” Klaus asks. 

“Bless his soul,” Amelia says, “The boy was delusional. Such an imagination. He made up these things…” 

Klaus sits up abruptly. “But about _ghosts,_ right?” 

“Perhaps,” She answers. “Ghosts, demons, something like.”

He realizes they need to pivot. Amelia has long ago shrugged off the miraculous circumstances of her son’s birth. She lives in a world without superpowers, without talking primates, and without ghost-whispering teenagers. 

“For _years_ , this goes on in my house,” she continues. “Got him all the attention.”

He also realizes she’s probably a pisspoor mother. 

Allison can sense him tensing. That explains the over-compensating gentleness that overtakes her voice with her next sentence. “Did you find that he was mentally ill?” She asks.

“I don’t know,” She says. “I talked to a friend of mine - very good doctor. He said he should write a journal. That would help him get to the real problem. But he kept filling it with all of these delusions.” 

“And that’s _it?”_ Klaus questions. “That’s all you did?”

“It must’ve been hard,” Allison quickly smooths over, “when they’re so out of touch from reality.”

Amelia nods. “Yes. Hard. We could not send him to a college like this, you see. His mind was a mess.”

“He lived here with you,” Allison assumes. “Up until…”

Amelia looks to the floor, resting her forehead in her hand. “Yes,” she replies. “His passing.”

“Um,” Allison starts softly, “If you don’t mind me asking... how did he pass? The obituary didn’t say.”

Keeping her gaze down, Amelia sighs. “It was a drug overdose,” she says. “That is what killed him.”

There’s a beat of silence as that information sits heavy in the air.

Terrific. So Klaus was _always_ going to be an addict, at some point or another. It seemed as consistent as his eye color, his birthmarks, or his very fingerprints. It was probably due to some biological predisposition, of course. But being so haunted for so many years without a shred of sympathy or understanding couldn’t have possibly helped matters.

But maybe it wasn’t the addiction alone.

“Was it suicide?” He asks.

Allison turns in shock and smacks his leg, glaring a dagger into him.

“It’s a real question!” He defends. “It sounds like he wasn’t a terribly happy kid!”

Amelia looks offended. “An accident,” she states. “The drugs, he tried to keep it all a secret from us. But there was no note, there was no intention... it was _not_ a suicide.”

“I think my brother is just emotionally overwhelmed,” Allison says. “We can’t help but feel a connection to him. We were born on that same day, you know.” She gestures forward. “October first? The baby boom?”

Amelia’s eyes grow wide. “Ah. Oh. You know about…?”

A landline phone rings in the kitchen. She groans as she hoists herself to standing. 

“Probably my husband,” she mumbles. “He is out today. Give me a moment?”

She walks out and picks up the phone. 

Klaus leans in toward Allison. “She’s full of shit,” he mutters. “This place is depressing as hell.”

Allison hits his leg again.

“Owwwwww,” he whines this time.

“Can you please play it cool for five minutes?” She demands.

“I mean, think about it!” Klaus continues. “They never wanted him to begin with, he’s stuck living in this dump for years after high school, then they’re trying to convince the kid he’s a goddamn schizophrenic, without so much as _daring_ to humor therapy...” he shakes his head with an exasperated laugh. “Jesus, I’m pretty sure I would’ve punched my own ticket, sooner or later.”

Allison has cooled off slightly. “You know, you _are_ stronger than you tend to give yourself credit for.”

“It’s not about strength, Allie, it’s—”

“I don’t think he meant to do it,” Allison states, like that's the end of it. “Might’ve thought about it, sure. But I don’t think Amelia would bother to lie about that.” 

She has a point. Klaus yields and sits back on the sofa.

Amelia returns. “I am back.” She drops herself into her chair once more. “You are free to see his room, if you feel you must. I don’t care. Just do not take anything.”

Allison looks to Klaus. “Do you…?”

Klaus doesn’t feel like there’s much of a choice to be made. He has to. As anxious as he feels, and as morbid as it is, the curiosity is killing him.

“Yeah, sure,” he answers. “I’ll give it a look-see.”

Amelia points down a hall. “Right at the end, past the study.”

“Oh.” He stands, avoiding Allison’s worrying eyes and mustering all the courage he can into one smile. _“Danke_.”

…

…

...

  
  


“Alright, Fischy,” he murmurs as he opens the door. “Let’s hear your story.”

He enters the bedroom. Like the rest of the house, it probably hasn’t been updated since the 70’s. The floors are purple-grey carpet and the walls are lined with boards of wood. It’s dark, save for a window with crooked blinds from which streetlight is trickling in. On the opposite side of the room is a bed, shoved into a corner, made up in pristine condition. The whole space is frozen in time, hardly touched in eight years.

He goes to the nightstand and turns on a lamp, casting an amber glow around the room. He notices a mess of papers posted on the walls around his bed. Nice to know that, on top of the genetic predisposition to addiction, Klaus F. also maintained the predisposition for being an obnoxiously artistic adolescent.

He’s just about to drink in the images, but first, he finds a composition notebook beside the lamp on the nightstand.

He sits right down on the bed and holds it in both hands. A title is scrawled onto the little white box at the top.

_The Voices in My Head  
_ _Klaus Fischer_

Just like he’d suspected. He’d taken this diary as an attempt to make sense of all the ghosts that found him when he was shaky and restless and unable to get his next hit. 

Klaus knows it’s not a perfect strategy. After the Academy and before Dallas, it took _immense_ focus for him to forge one-on-one contact. Just because the kid could hold one or two clear conversations a night didn’t mean the helpless screaming of the hordes of the damned didn’t terrorize him the rest of the time he was sober.

He opens the journal carefully, almost like he’s afraid it’s a spring-loaded trap. Then, he thumbs through the entries. 

There’s a name and range of years for each one. Most entries have a few bullet points of conversation, scattered randomly around the page rather than in a clean vertical stack.

_Phillip  
_ _1901-1934  
_ _Yorkshire  
_ _Fat + ginger beard  
_ _Misses his son, Thomas  
_ _Played cello  
_ _Building fire - bad scarring  
_ _He kept laughing at his own jokes - probably a riot in the 20’s. Didn’t get them._

_Sissy  
_ _1932-2009  
_ _Sacramento  
_ _Braids  
_ _Waiting for wife - together 30 years  
_ _Worked in a department store  
_ _Cancer  
_ _She has a really kind voice. She was so so sweet. Sturdy and sure of herself._

_Russel  
_ _1882-1899  
_ _New York  
_ _“Fuggedaboutit”  
_ _Big glasses  
_ _Loved a newsgirl named Laura  
_ _Good at chess (according to him)  
_ _Polio  
_ _His mind blew wayyy open when I told him we’re not all on board with vaccines_

He keeps flipping through. Name, dates, details. Name, dates, details. A rough scribble of their silhouette or profile. A doodle of a shriveled flower or arrangement of stars in the margins. The pen color goes from black to purple to pink to blue, flickering through each option solely based on the most conveniently-located writing instrument at the time of contact.

It’s about thirty entries in, dated April 2011. His heart lurches.

_David  
_ _1941-1964  
_ _Dallas  
_ _Family issues  
_ _Geek  
_ _Marines  
_ _Vietnam sounds phenomenally screwed up. He must've been too handsome for that shitshow, so they HAD to off him._

Klaus fixates on one bullet. “Marines”.

Dave was always careful. He picked his battles. He wasn’t stupid. He knew how to negotiate, how to spot loopholes, and - as this single word shows - how to find compromise. He’d heard Klaus’s warnings about his fate in the army but was unable to avoid enlistment. Maybe joining a different branch would ensure a safe journey home. 

The revelation is a pair of waves, one closely chasing the next, crashing over a shoreline; the first of pride and relief, and the second of sudden heartache.

Dave had died in ‘64. Klaus had only screwed it up even worse.

He can’t dwell too long on that now, or he’ll be pathetic and disgusting, just falling apart in this stranger’s dusty old house. He flips forward through the next few pages.

_Graham  
_ _1789-1824..._

 _Gerard  
_ _1934-1999..._

 _Emily  
_ _1834-1900..._

He doesn’t make it very far. 

_~~David~~ Dave (Part 2)  
_ _Came back!  
_ _Says he only answered my open call the first time because he thought I might be a weird guy from his time. Clearly not. + Google doesn’t have much for “Klaus Religion 1963”??_ _Probably just an elaborate excuse to come talk to me._

Klaus tenses up. He never thought about how Destiny’s Children would be remembered in 2019. And he never considered that Dallas-Dave’s ghost might actually _seek him out._

It’s four more entries before Part 3. Three more before Part 4. Little nonsense notes and scribbles fill each chapter of their meetings.

_Texas = boring as shit_

_Cat person - Kitty Katz!!_

_Still have that copy of Dune?_

_“Crimson and Clover” - iTunes later_

It runs on and on with nauseating acceleration, and then it drops off all at once. Did he stop visiting? Or did Klaus F. no longer feel the need to document every hour they spent together?

Klaus is drowning. He needs to pull back. With a deep breath, he drops the journal at his side and lays back, letting his arms collapse onto the bed too. 

He stares at the popcorn ceiling. When he’s calmed down, his eyes catch on the chaotic collage around him. He starts to scan across it. 

The first panel, the wall just above the headboard, is filled with posters, flyers, and photographs from an average-boring-everyday high school. Rock concert advertisements typed in blood red. Blurry pictures of friends in embarrassing gothic makeup. Grades and comments from art projects. Artifacts from something closely resembling a normal adolescence. Closer than Klaus has ever gotten, anyway.

The wall to his left is a cluttered corkboard of artwork. There are a few landscapes and angry abstract explosions of color, but most of the works are portraits.

It’s bleeding with Dave.

He doesn’t think anyone else would notice the recurring muse if they didn’t know the shapes of his face as intimately as he did. His gaze first catches on a horizontal strip of card stock, where a pair of kind eyes have been carefully sketched in pencil. Only the irises have been colored, with a smudge of piercing blue.

Next to that is a charcoal rendering, an unrefined study in shadow. It depicts the model from the waist up, laying back on this bed. His head is facing away and out the window, towards the sunlight flooding into the room. It's a blissfully quiet, carefree moment - the kind Klaus had scarcely ever gotten. (Maybe not too quiet. He thinks he can hear a few stern “stay still”s and chuckles in the image.)

One of the larger pages is a dark-lined bust filled in with messy splashes of watercolor. The subject is facing forward, shoulders cinched up and face crinkled, laughing. His eyes are shut, and a few strokes of pink top his cheekbones. It’s an honest, un-staged expression burned so deeply into Klaus’s mind (even without seeing it for three long years) that he knows this was painted not just by reference, but by memory after happy memory. 

Dave is everywhere. He’s spread out all over the walls. He’s at the tip of each pen on the bedside table, black to purple to pink to blue. The mattress still remembers the weight of his physical form. The echoes of his voice still ring in the air. 

Klaus knows the effects of the liquor are wearing off by now. The young spirits from before are trickling back in, in alternating waves of clarity and muddiness, as if a radio dial in Klaus’s head is being frantically spun back and forth. 

_“Stop it,”_ he distantly hears, light and giggling and endeared, somewhere in another room. _“I mean it!”_

But he still doesn’t place the voices. He won’t. 

“Hey.”

Klaus tilts his head up. Allison is in the doorway, giving the frame a gentle knock.

“You alright?” she asks.

“Peachy,” Klaus manages, dropping back once more. He knows he’s probably pale as ever.

Allison tilts her head sympathetically. She steps in and sits next to him on the bed. 

“I know I got freaked out when I saw ‘Alt’ Allison’s show, but...” she sighs and glances around the room. “I can’t imagine how weird it is when your twin’s already... y’know.” She looks down to Klaus and puts a hand on his shoulder. “It’s a lot, isn’t it?”

Klaus just nods. “A little.”

“Well,” Allison says, “Amelia doesn’t know anything helpful.”

“Big surprise.”

“She’s calling us a taxi right now. You think you’ll be good to go in five?” 

“I think so,” Klaus answers. He's coming back to the present, suddenly remembering the events that brought him to this dark twisted room in the first place. He rubs his hands down his face. “God. I’m almost sorry I was such a bitch to her earlier.”

Allison smiles. “It was kinda fair,” she admits. She stands with a little gesture of ‘see you soon’ and walks out.

Klaus is alone again, facing towards the sky, listening to the ticking of the alarm clock and feeling the flannel sheets beneath his body. He’s breathing in this place that is forever stuck in 2011. Surrounded by the life he almost had. Surrounded by the death he could have met. 

A bright voice finally cuts all the way through the murk of his mind.

_“Do you think they know?”_

It’s soft and suddenly solemn, like the tone of a little boy who’s certain he’s in trouble. It’s coming from right outside the open door, in the hallway Allison just exited through, connecting this bedroom to the study and living room.

Klaus finds the strength to sit up. He grips the journal in both hands and hunches forward, elbows resting on his knees. 

He sees the profile of a slender boy down the hall, early twenties, dressed in black, with messy curling hair. His stance is uncertain, hands stuck to the sides of his skinny jeans, as his gaze is fixed towards the room Allison is still in.

A second spirit steps into the hall from behind him - Same height, slightly stronger build, in a tee and the grass-green pants and boots of his uniform.

“Know what?” he asks.

The first ghost’s voice shrinks even more. “That I really didn’t mean to.”

The marine steps closer still and threads his arms under the other’s, hugging his waist from behind. 

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” he murmurs. He sets his head atop the other boy’s far shoulder. “Do you think they’re really like you?” he asks. “That they can see us?”

The brunet falls silent for a moment. He gently turns his head as his eyes find Klaus. 

It’s looking into a mirror. The feeling doesn’t come with any comfort. It’s psychological feedback, shrieking in Klaus’s ears. He doesn’t have a single clue what he would say if they acknowledged each other past this crushing moment of eye contact. It would be immensely easier to just block it out. 

The spirit seems to come to this same conclusion.

He puts on a grin.

“No way in hell,” he replies. He turns his head the other way, nuzzling nose-to-nose with the marine. “I’m one of a kind, baby.” 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> the girl that was probably my gay awakening was an art student and she would give me lil drawings she did almost everyday so this goes out to you babe miss u xoxo

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Peculiar Love Affair of Klaus Fischer and the Late David Katz](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28767024) by [Smallswritesstuff](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smallswritesstuff/pseuds/Smallswritesstuff)




End file.
